Why do dragons like gold

As is the basic drive of almost every living thing in our world. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why did Smaug gather a treasure of gold and other precious objects? Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 11 months ago. Active 2 years ago. Viewed 35k times. Why did Smaug gather his treasure? Improve this question. Community Bot 1. DavRob60 DavRob60 For the record, the sole purpose of the mission is not to rob Smaug. The purpose was to get the mountain back , with the treasure as a benefit of that.

Because that's what dragons do. Worries of hyperinflation. Gold's always been the haven of those who worry about economic stability. Gold therapy : guaranteed to make your scales shine! Appear years younger! Be a hit with the ladies! I'm interested in this question because my wife has the same problem as Smaug, tends to after gold and jewelry that's completely inedible. Show 9 more comments.

Active Oldest Votes. From The Hobbit : Dragons steal gold and jewels , you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live which is practically forever, unless they are killed , and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Improve this answer. NominSim NominSim One might note, however, that this quote is from a speech by Thorin, so is his opinion of dragon motivations, not necessarily Tolkien's canonical definition of dragonhood.

The Scythians are famous for their gold art objects. He says that way up north in the Altai mountains where the Scythians mined their gold and made their gold objects, there were gryphons guarding piles of gold. The gryphon was a four footed bird.

That mythical creature easily turned into the dragon. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Where does the idea that dragons hoard gold come from? Ask Question. Asked 3 years, 8 months ago. Sticking an arrow through the skull of an Uruk and then pulling it out and shooting it has to be done with elite skill.

Why do dragons sleep on gold? Why do dragons keep gold? Why do dragons eat virgins? Do dragons really like gold? Why is smaug obsessed with gold? Is Smaug the last dragon? Who is stronger Gandalf or Saruman? Why did Sauron not kill Gandalf? Why did smaug die so fast? Beyond that, individual settings may come up with any number of justifications for this behavior. These can range from piques of an individual dragon's whim, to the hoard serving as a very long life's worth of trophies and mementos, to the dragon actually having practical use for the stuff, to it serving as an elaborate mating or power display by symbolizing the dragon's personal success and might.

The association of dragons with greed, combined with their preference for gold, makes that dragon hoards coincide with a certain regularity with outbreaks of Gold Fever. Treasure-hoarding dragons, once common, became increasingly forgotten in the age of Chivalric Romance : For a Knight in Shining Armor , fighting for so mundane a reward as treasure was no longer deemed noble enough. Hence gold-hoarding dragons were largely superseded by the princess-stealing ones , until the trope was revived by Fantasy literature, especially through the influence of The Hobbit.

In more realistic settings where dragons don't exist, large reptiles may sometimes be encountered guarding treasures. Parody versions will involve dragons hoarding something other than treasure. May involve a Treasure Room. This trope is to Pooled Funds as a waterbed is to a swimming pool depending on the size and age of the dragon, it may be the other way around.

Community Showcase More. Follow TV Tropes. You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account. Original by Blensig. Little Witch Academia has Fafnir, a dragon who has chosen to adopt to modern times by becoming an online stock broker and a Loan Shark.

In Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid , Fafnir is the only major dragon character portrayed as having hoarding tendencies. After moving to Japan, this is mostly channeled into otaku merchandise and grinding items in MMORPGs, though one chapter of Kanna's Daily Life reveals he has a cache of classic arcade machines in an abandoned building.

Card Games. Havok and Hijinks : You play as a young dragon, freshly kicked out of the lair for eyeing Ma and Pa's own treasure, who's roaming the land in order to amass their own pile of shiny stuff and valuables and competing with other dragons trying to do the same.

Magic: The Gathering has a handful of dragons based on this trope, including Covetous Dragon which must be sacrificed if you control no artifact cards , Hoarding Dragon , Hellkite Tyrant which allows you to a take control of all artifacts your opponent controls when you attack, and b win the game when you control twenty or more artifacts , and Hoard-Smelter Dragon.

There's also the artifact card Dragon's Hoard. Comic Books. Loki: Agent of Asgard : Old! Loki engineers the creation of one as part of a complicated plan time travel and narrative causality were involved. After getting themself and young Odin into debt, they steal a hoard of gold from a shape-shifter, who places a truth-curse on the gold with his dying breath.

The man who ends up with the gold has his inner greed brought out by the curse, and ends up sleeping on it until the curse physically turns him into a dragon. This is a reference to the Norse myth of Fafnir — see below. Black Moon Chronicles : The oldest and biggest dragon in the world, who spawned the rest of his race , has been sleeping for thousands of years Beneath the Earth on top of a huge pile of gold. Comic Strips. A single panel comic in Dragon had a group of adventurers searching the hoard of a dragon they'd just slain, only to discover that it consisted of nothing but chests full of Beanie Babies.

Fortunately for them, the dragon is asleep Beneath Your Feet What Treasures : Spike has a secret hoard, the centerpiece of which is the gem that Rarity gave him back in season 1. Child of the Storm : In the sequel, the Elder Wyrm is implied to have had one, with some gold having become inlaid on his scales, and have been snoozing on it for the last millennium.

However, it's not discussed, and even if he had, the fact that he promptly transformed his cave into a newborn volcano suggests that it wouldn't have survived.

Instead, almost in an inversion of the trope, the real hoard is created afterwards by Doctor Strange, who uses the Philosopher's Stone as a tool to transform the magma within the volcano, and much of the lava chamber below, into a mixture of mithril and vibranium. Cue mass drooling.

Harry is a Dragon, and That's Okay : Harry's already created his own hoard early in the story after reading about dragons having them; this is noted to be odd behavior, as the setting's actual dragons do not gather hoards. However as Harry is a bookworm and a literal bookwyrm, as named by Charlie Weasley he instead has a hoard of books and Hogwarts letters which he likes to sleep on. After encountering his vault and canon fortune he is also compelled by instinct to lie on it and burrow within it.

The Butcher Bird : An allegorical version. One character, Six, refers to the other members of the Nightmare Pirates by titles that reflect their personalities and roles in the crew.

He calls Kaneki Dragon , and thinks of those Kaneki cares about as this trope. Films — Animation. Shrek : Dragon sleeps on-top of a mountain of treasure. She doesn't seem that bothered by the collection of treasure in the sequels, though. The Hobbit : The animated movie shows Smaug sleeping on his treasure as if it were a bed. In The Flight of Dragons , dragons nest on top of gold because they find it comfortable to sleep on, and it won't catch fire.

Moana features a variation with Giant Enemy Crab Tamatoa. Instead of lying on his hoard, Tamatoa puts it on top of his shell to make himself as his Villain Song puts it "shiny".

It actually serves a purpose for him; the gleam attracts fish, who fall into his lair for him to eat. The treasure includes Maui's magic fishhook not because it's shiny, but as retribution for Maui taking one of his legs , which is why he and Moana go down to his lair to retrieve it. Films — Live-Action. The Jungle Book : The treasure vault in the monkey's lost city is inhabited by a huge python which attacks anyone who tries to take from the treasure. Reign of Fire : When the young Quinn first stumbles into where the dragon is hibernating, the walls are covered by pyrite We don't get long enough to look at it before all the burning and the death starts.

Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real claims that dragons are naturally attracted to shiny objects and may collect hoards of such items, more or less valuable, to allure potential mates. Smaug is also able to detect that the invisible Bilbo is wearing "something golden" the Ring , which suggests he can sense maybe smell gold. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone mentions that the vaults of Gringotts Wizarding Bank are guarded by trained dragons.

Mythica : The party fight and kill a dragon guarding a hoard, but are unable to rob the hoard. However, dragon teeth are worth gold each, so not all is lost. Conan the Barbarian : Conan and Subotai break into the Tower of the Serpent and discover a pit in which a gigantic snake sleeps coiled around a kind of altar, on which a large red gem is displayed. Conan succeeds in taking the gem but accidentally wakes the snake with drops of sweat dripping from his face.

The snake attacks and nearly kills Conan, but is killed through Conan's and Subotai's joint efforts. Dracopedia : Most dragons will instinctively gather shiny objects with which to line their nests or dens. When the fox wonders why anyone would waste his life in this way, the dragon admits there is no point to his behaviour other than that it is what Jupiter and the Fates have assigned to him.

The moral then draws an explicit parallel between human avarice and miserliness and the pointless gold-hoarding of the dragon. The Saga of the Jomsvikings speculates that a sea-serpent seen in Hjorunga Bay at the Norwegian coast is the ghost of the Jomsviking Bui, guarding the two chests of gold he took with him to his watery grave. The Icelandic Sagas : The Saga of Halfdan Eysteinsson tells how the viking Valr and his two sons, fleeing from enemies and carrying two chests of gold, jump down into a Cave Behind The Waterfall where they "laid themselves on the gold and became flying-dragons".

In The Saga of Gold-Thorir , Gold-Thorir and his companions enter the cave and kill the very same dragons to loot the treasure.

When, many years later, Gold-Thorir disappears without a trace, it is suggested that he himself has turned into a dragon to guard his riches in some secret hiding-place. In The Saga of Yngvar the Traveller , Yngvar and his crew encounter treasure-hoarding dragons twice during their voyage up a great river in Asia: The voyagers get sight of a hill shining like gold in the distance.

In the night, a watchman goes to explore the hill and discovers it is entirely covered by sleeping serpents. He sees a gold ring between the serpents hinting that there may be more treasure underneath the snakes and fishes it out with his spear. This wakes up a small snake which then wakes up all the other serpents and finally the largest, a flying dragon called Jakulus. Jakulus pursues the watchman and destroys two of Yngvar's ships before returning to his lair. Reaching the source of the great river, the voyagers discover a huge dragon "and much gold lying under it.

Shortly after, the voyagers meet a demon who explains the spot where the dragon guards the hoard was the tomb of a very rich king named Siggeus, who also had three daughters who were so greedy two of them killed themselves just because they were jealous of their sisters' wealth.

Later, "dragons ate the king's cadaver and the bodies of his daughters" but also "some believe they've turned into dragons. It is later revealed that his venom has dried up from old age.